One of Syracuse basketball’s most iconic figures will return to the Carrier Dome court this fall.

Carmelo Anthony, the forward who led Syracuse to a national championship in 2003 in his only season at the school, will make his second appearance in the Dome since leaving SU when his Denver Nuggets take on the Phoenix Suns in an NBA preseason game Friday, Oct. 17.

The event was first reported in the Rocky Mountain News Wednesday, and was confirmed Thursday by representatives from the Nuggets and the Syracuse athletic department.

It will be the second preseason game Anthony has taken part in at the Dome. The first was in 2003, when the then-rookie’s Nuggets played the Detroit Pistons. This will be the eighth NBA preseason game in the Dome and the first since that matchup.

In the past year, Anthony has taken pains to cement his legacy at SU, pledging $3 million toward the building of a state-of-the-art basketball practice facility adjacent to Manley Field House that will bear his name. The Carmelo K. Anthony Center is tentatively scheduled to open in the fall of 2009.

‘I am a lot more excited about this upcoming preseason knowing that I get to go back and play in the Dome again,’ Anthony told SUathletics.com regarding the event. ‘Syracuse and the Dome are special places for me. It will be great to come back and play in front of everyone again.’

Tickets for the game will go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. at Ticketmaster locations as well as the Carrier Dome box office.

The event will be promoted by One-on-One Basketball Inc., a basketball training and promotions company based out of Washington D.C.

‘(Carmelo) has a perpetual, folk hero status (in Syracuse),’ said Chris Cordes, One-on-One’s New York State Director who is primarily responsible for negotiating and promoting the event. ‘He helped bring something first, to the program, and second, to the entire community that had never been done before and can never be taken he away. So he’s always going to be identified with that.’

Cordes, a Syracuse alum, promoted the Nuggets preseason visit to SU in 2003, as well other NBA preseason games that bought former SU stars Pearl Washington and Derrick Coleman back to their alma mater.

Cordes said he first contacted the Nuggets and Suns nine months ago to try and set up this matchup, which he expects to be even bigger than past preseason games at the Dome.

‘The theme is to bring the former star back to campus,’ Cordes said. ‘The other thing though, is that the opponent is important. And we want to get as good a game as we possibly can. This is as good a game as we have ever bought to Syracuse.’

Indeed, the matchup will feature three former MVP winners (Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Nash and Allen Iverson), and two teams that made the playoffs last year, going a combined 105-59.

Cordes also pointed out there are no SU football home games in October, making the game the only major sporting event in Syracuse that month.

But the main draw will remain Anthony, who is revered in Syracuse despite only playing one year for the Orangemen. In that 2003 season, he averaged 22.1 points and 10 rebounds per game for SU en route to its first national championship victory, 81-78, over Kansas. Anthony was named the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament.

Anthony opted to enter the NBA Draft shortly after that, and was selected third overall by the Denver Nuggets. The Baltimore native has since established himself as one of the league’s best offensive players, averaging 24.4 points and six rebounds per game in his career. He has been selected to the last two All-star games.

That’s not to say Anthony hasn’t attracted his share of controversy since leaping to the NBA. Most recently, he was arrested on March 14 under suspicion of driving under the influence.

But none of that seems to have diminished his popularity in Syracuse.

jsclayto@syr.edu

Published on July 2, 2008 at 12:00 pm